Cell phones used in Monroe County Courthouse bomb threats recovered from lake

by Jade Jarvis

COOLBAUGH TWP., MONROE COUNTY (WOLF) -- A phone and half of another believed to have been used in making two of nine threats at the Monroe County Courthouse this year were found in the lake at Tobyhanna State Park Wednesday.

Two dive teams assisted the Monroe County District Attorney's Office in the search.

Officials say both suspects threw those phones in the lake at the park after making those threat calls.

For those who had jury duty today at the Monroe County Courthouse, a welcome return to normalcy.

“I mean everything was backed up in the courthouse today they had like 230, close to 300 jurors, and that’s due because of all the bomb threats so they had to push a lot of trials back so. But it worked out to be okay today," Darryl Henry, of Blakeslee, said.

That’s because 49-year-old Jesus Castrodad and his 32-year-old girlfriend Colleen Kasdaglis are locked up in the Monroe County Correctional Facility.

Police say they’re behind a string of bomb threats that have plagued the courthouse this year, admitting to seven between July and the latest on Tuesday.

Several of those threats were traced back to Tobyhanna State Park.

Detectives were there just before 9 a.m. Tuesday looking for surveillance cameras when they were told another threat was called in and traced yet again to the beach in the park.

Around that time they saw a white van leaving the park, and put out a “be on the look out alert” to other officers.

The van was later stopped on Route 940 with Castrodad and Kasdaglis inside.

“They deserve what they get full penalty If this really would have happened everybody in Stroudsburg would have got hurt and that’s not good," Hector Rios, of Stroudsburg, said.

Today, a dive team searched the lake at the park to recover two cell phones used in two separate threats.

They found the phone from Tuesday's call and half of the phone from another placed on October 1. It was broken in two before being thrown into the lake.

Officials say those threats cost taxpayers tens of thousands of dollars in lost productivity and emergency response costs.

“It was a pain the behind as far as the expenses are concerned with Stroudsburg, it costs a lot of money, taxpayers. But I’m glad they got them," Henry said.

Both Castrodad and Kasdaglis are in jail on $1 million bail each.

Crews will not return to the park to search for the other half of the broken phone and plan to proceed with what they found.